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This is Part 4 of a 4 Part series on how Mayor Weinberger and the Burlington Business Association don’t represent regular Burlingtonians and are using their influence to push a rushed and rigged Downtown Improvement District that gives a handful of wealthy folks even more power at the expense of actual Burlington residents. Parts 1, 2, 3, are here.

The BBA is made up of very wealthy business owners and homeowners, many of whom have little personal interest or stake in Burlington, who care more about bringing wealthy tourists to the city than serving regular Burlington residents, while a handful of BBA Members have extra influence. The BBA doesn’t represent ‘mom and pop’ businesses or Burlington residents in any real way, and when they support the Downtown Improvement District it is not to the benefit of most Burlington residents and workers.

When one thinks of the Burlington Business Association, they think of restaurants, bars, and retail shops owned by Burlington residents. The truth is quite the opposite.

40 members, or 22% of the BBA, has neither a shop or home in Burlington. Think about that. 1/5th of the BBA has ZERO reason to be members of the BBA in the first place! For all we know, maybe they’re actually interested in helping their own community’s economy and sabotaging ours.

81 members, or 40% of the BBA, aren’t even based in Burlington. While they have a financial stake in Burlington, it’s hard to believe they’re equally invested in Burlington when their main investment is somewhere else; they cannot be as committed to Burlington as a small business owner living in Burlington.

Of the ‘Small Businesses’ that politicians and the BBA and their supporters love to fetishize so much, only 27% of small business owners even live in Burlington. Why is our city good enough for them to extract wealth from but not good enough to live in, to raise their kids?

When you think of Burlington, what comes to mind? Restaurants, bars, retail, right? It turns out that the BBA barely represents the storefronts in Burlington, the whole reason our downtown is doing so well in the first place. Only 22% of the BBA membership represents the service industry, while a full 56% of BBA membership represents tourism, other business organizations, businesses that support other businesses, finance/lawyers, and real estate industry.

These are businesses that aren’t small mom and pop shops trying to make or sell a product. These are large corporations, businesses that try to attract wealthy business partners, clients, or tourists. These are not businesses that support, nor are invested in, the vast majority of Burlington workers or residents.

On top of this, the BBA members who live in Burlington are extremely wealthier than the typical Burlington resident, with an average home value of $560k-$640k, 75-100% higher than the MEDIAN home owner, putting them into the top 10-15% of wealthiest Burlington residents. In fact, only 1 member who lives in Burlington has a home that is priced below the median.

Lastly, as a little quirk, the BBA has a handful of incredibly wealthy members who have multiple businesses registered to the BBA, thereby giving them more influence over the BBA agenda. (Oddly enough, many Burlington departments are members of the BBA in a very strange blurring of lines and potential conflict of interest.)

It’s worth asking if the folks supporting the downtown improvement district have Burlington’s best interests in mind, and why our councilors overwhelmingly approved a rush plan supported by wealthy business lobbyists.

This is Part 1 of a 4 Part series on how Mayor Weinberger and the Burlington Business Association don’t represent regular Burlingtonians and are using their influence to push a rushed and rigged Downtown Improvement District that gives a handful of wealthy folks even more power at the expense of actual Burlington residents. Parts 1,2, 3, 4, are here.

Folks who support the Downtown Privitization Plan will tell you our downtown economy is struggling. Yet what they don’t tell you is that while Burlington Business owners have seen profits grow by 20% in real value since 2008, downtown workers have not shared in any of those profits.

The many pro-business/anti-worker folks (along with the powerful Burlington Business Association) supporting the city’s rushed Downtown Improvement District, a plan that does absolutely nothing to meaningfully increase democratic participation or offer inclusion to marginalized voices, will tell you that this privatization plan needs to happen. They will offer the same arguments they used when trying to sell us the ongoing $22-million-public-funding mall debacle.

They will tell you that Burlington’s economy, and Church Street, are dying, and the only way to save our entire city is not by making sure everyone has enough money to afford basic necessities so they can support local businesses, but rather that we hand over even more control to wealthy non-Burlington landlords and non-Burlington businesses.

Why is it that Burlington is a good enough place for many of these folks to make money, on the backs of workers and renters, but not a good enough place for them to live, raise children, and spend said profits in?

The data, however, doesn’t support their doom-and-gloom claims for business owners (for workers and renters, that’s a different story for another day). In fact, Burlington’s economy is very stable and has been growing well (20%) since the Great Recession, particularly when we account for weakened unions, runaway healthcare costs, growing income and wealth inequality, and stagnant wages for most residents.

Meal, Rooms, and Alcohol sales have grown by 69% when factored in for inflation.

The picture is much less rosy when we consider Retail and Use taxes, which have been hit hard by many factors, including the problem that most workers pay over 40% of their post-taxed income to rent.

Sales and Use taxes have decreased by 50% when factored with inflation.

It looks like maybe the Burlington economy, while not a magical beast that can defy national and international trends of wealth inequality and global capital ravishing local economies, has been quite consistent.

The truth is that since 2005, when accounting for inflation, our economy has shrunk by 1.1%.

Since January 2009, Burlington’s retail and food economy have grown by 20% overall, so why again do we need to hand over power to the few folks who have actually made money since the 2009 Recession?